GrayTear Drabble Series: Brief Interludes
by myshippingdock
Summary: Fleeting interludes between Gray and Ultear. set in Canon. Compliant with canon events. one-shots. two-shots. etc.


**Pushing forward**

Prompt:

She's pulsing life

Rising above dark waters

Illumined by gray shadows.

Still burning bright

Pushing past ripples of sins

And lost happiness.

She's slipping away

Beyond his reach

Because he is afraid.

There are some places you want to go

But you know you can't.

Because you are so aware

Of places gone wrong

The places that could become right again

Seem beyond his reach.

Happiness was fleeting.

It continued to evade him

Endlessly unattainable.

Like her.

She splashed into the wildly thrashing waters, gazing up at the cleansing skies raining down on her.

He waited a beat.

and another…

She broke surface and rose above the storming water-line, dripping wet and clutching herself, her hair like dark purple ripples fanning behind her, tangled thickly in the hidden depths of the illuminating gray waters.

He sank back, floating face up, observing her from the corner of his eyes.

She looked like a broken water nymph.

Or an empty, pulsing nymph of life…

Lost, battered, and haplessly drained of her magic and purpose in life.

...

Then did that make him? ...the one who broke her?

...

He looked away.

...

He was more than a little battered himself, and drifting along painfully beside her.

Close enough to glimpse the dark, haunting orbs blurring from the corner of his averted gaze.

Dark, throbbing tears of her regrettable past clinging to her smoky lashes and soaked skin…

….glistening afresh, like the darkest morning dew… gliding wearily down her alabaster cheeks, mixing with the pouring rains under fading twilight shadows of the thundering night.

She looked like sorrow caving in, bathed in ocean cold waves of inescapable truth and warm, hard misery.

Hurting, and pulsing with life, even in her disgrace; broken and exposed and vulnerable…

And wanting more from the world than her miserable cursed existence of a life.

It hurt to look at her so he looked up at the pulsing skies thundering down at them instead.

All she wanted was to be loved.

He hadn't realized how wild the skies had gotten since he plummeted off the broken cliff-edge with her.

He stretched his fingers up to the crying blankets of storming night, keeping himself afloat with his other hand. He tried to wrap his fingers around the force of the dropping tears, holding them up with his palm, but the heaving drops…they kept…slipping through his fingers...again ….and again.

He couldn't contain its sorrow. He couldn't reign it in. He couldn't make it stop.

He couldn't brush it away.

He couldn't do anything. Or change anything for her.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't.

It wouldn't let him. _She_ wouldn't let him.

The storm outside matched the storm within them.

He threw another glance at her.

She looked reluctant to step outside. She didn't want to leave the freezing ocean waters.

Of course she didn't.

She didn't want to be ripped away from the jagged pieces of her past she hadn't been aware of.

It would be painful to separate herself from the numbing, frothy waves of amethyst-gray tearing at her because Ul was inside them.

Ul had melted into these waters, so of course it was hard for her-

All she wanted was to be with her mother one more time.

And now she couldn't anymore.

Because of him.

She couldn't be with Ul anymore because He had killed Ul.

He had killed her mother… and any chance she had of reuniting with her.

He had no right, no right to get close or try to contain her tears anyway.

Not someone like him, who was the reason she couldn't find the happiness she sought.

He was the sole reason the mother she could hate no longer was dead.

He doubted that she would want him to anyway.

There was nothing but painful memories connecting them-

He leaned his head slightly towards her, his cheek against the cold surface, so he could see her.

He wanted to memorize his last glimpse of her but…he couldn't see her.

He felt a slow numbness gripping him.

He imagined her sinking, slipping under the surface, and willingly seeking the merciless embrace of screaming tides of bottomless ocean….

….the image of her moist vulnerable iris glazing with hapless tears, and sinking strength, flashed before him….and he felt it….the crushing weight of her sins holding her down, refusing to let her resurface…

And he panicked.

He plunged after her without waiting a beat for her to resurface on her own like she had before.

How could he not have realized she would be plagued with dark depressing thoughts determined to pull her under?

Then he was under and he instantly started reliving sinking underwater together with her before, suffocating and pushing wildly against each other, and the piercing pressure of the waters pressing all around them, the pain in his damaged ribs building.

He forced his eyes open against the crushing currents for sight of her.

Ultear! His blank mind repeated like a mindless mantra.

He reached wildly for the dark sinking blur, and grasped her cold wetness still pulsing with life against his broken body, and struggled with her- against the assaulting waters- for the surface.

He could tell that she was conscious.

She didn't resist him like she didn't resist the relentless waters trying to take her down and pull her away from him.

He realized suddenly that she just didn't have any strength left in her to care, or fight anybody or anything anymore.

He rose above the roaring surface carrying her in his arms and made his way, painstakingly slow, to the rocky shores a few paces ahead of them.

Every part of his body hurt, but he refused to let go of the soft weight against him till they were both resting safely on shore where they could steady themselves on their own, and recover from their exertions.

They were both cold to the touch, and aching, so it was a relief to be this close to her body for the brief period till they touched land.

They could steal warmth and share their body heat like this in silence, without a word or a sound until they couldn't anymore.

He scoffed internally at himself as he fixed his stare straight-ahead on their destination.

It sounded like he was saying they should cling to each other for as long as they needed to, or, as Juvia would decode it -make hot steamy love under the crying stormy skies to melt away their pain or something inanely silly, and elemental, and romantic like that. Juvia would certainly interpret his "steal warmth and share body heat" thought in exactly that way, he supposed dryly.

She would also turn into ice cold water and try to drown them both or maybe just Ultear, when she realized he literally just had a very vague 'fantasy' about hugging or making love to Ultear when he never bothered to entertain such 'torrid' thoughts about Juvia.

Whatever.

He was aching something terrible, and all over, and in no condition to be having useless sultry imaginations the likes of Juvia, let alone be acting on them. No way could he perform well anyway, whether he was under or over Ult- What the hell kind of direction were his thoughts taking?

Juvia was a seriously baad influence; speaking of which, she was not going to like this bit of development in his head one bit if she ever got wind of it.

He didn't care either way, but he still really shouldn't be entertaining weird thoughts about Ultear at a time like this, or ever, for that matter. Period.

He wasn't sure quite what to make of his own thoughts… Chalk it up to pain and exhaustion? ...

He must have hit his head really hard against the rocks or the waterwaves, when rolling around, entangled in her; in a headlock; necking, and limbing with her; and crashing hard into the waves together.

For fuck's sake, what the hell was wrong with him today? Turning something so sacred and tangible between them, that had them so powerfully and emotionally absorbed in each other, they didn't realize, or care they were falling off a cliff-edge, into something almost sexual, when it shouldn't really be like that between them…right?

Damn, he wanted to run his fingers through his wet hair in frustration, but he had her in his arms right now…. soft, wet and compliant.

Talk about rotten timing.

A secret odd part of him right then wished he knew what it felt like to have his body ache so bad simply because he'd made wild, passionate love to a woman.

Maybe then his imagination wouldn't be acting up because of stupid stuff like this.

He was _used_ to his body suffering from throbbing aches and bruises all the fucking time, because of some raucous or another, 8 parts courtesy of Natsu, and 2 parts Fairy Tail shenanigans, but _never_ because of a woman.

Well, except for _Erza_. She certainly made his body ache in a lot of complicated ways plenty of times, but that was quite a misleading statement by itself.

He looked down at Ultear suspended gently in his stiff arms after their soul-altering, rage-expending, passionate romp in the woods and waters.

Her eyes were unbelievably wide, almost like she couldn't believe he was bothering to carry her out of the water to safety. She had that low of an opinion of him, did she?

Her lips were parted, bruised and swollen, like the ragged red of a broken heartbeat still throbbing with life.

It was a mistake.

To look at her when his mind was plagued with vague, disjointed inappropriate thoughts of her had been a mistake.

The image of her presently did nothing to help dispel his 'particular' thoughts.

She looked like a woman thoroughly loved.

Or more appropriately, a woman irreparably abused.

If he was functioning normally, he would focus on the second frame of thought and easily stem down the innuendo inducing thought process he seemed currently prone towards. …

Instead, more of the awful and unlikely, cliché ideas, not unlike those spouted by Cana in her drunken stupors lately, (had she always been such a pervy drunk?) or in the exaggerated romance novels on Lucy's book shelves, ( she liked stuff like that?) or Juvia's flowery imagined delusions ( how much crazier could her thought processes get? He didn't think he wanted to know.) flooded him.

He let himself wonder how they would react if they saw him like this, and they looked something like the way they did right now, on a normal regular day.

He already covered Juvia's jealous reaction. He might also expect her to surround herself with depressing rains, atleast, until Lyon came around to charm her out of her blues.

Cana would tease him and look at him knowingly. She would say Ultear looked like Gray had ripped her away from the violent passions and punishing kisses of a lover he disapproved of, Or, maybe Gray was the terrible lover that had reduced her to such a miserable state…? Just to push his buttons and it would work.

Lucy would look sympathetic and agree playfully to the Cana's former assertion, and add that Gray had probably fought someone really hard in order to save Ultear judging by how beaten up he looked. She would say, "Don't you think Ultear looks like she is finally feeling secure in the arms of her unforgiving savior, who had just rescued her from the violating, unwanted assaults of a dreadful rapist." She would know what that feels like since the poor kids been assaulted one too many times to keep count.

And Erza? Whoa, she would blush silly and promptly hold the sharp end of her sword to his neck and ask him deadpan if he intended to marry Ultear for compromising her chastity… after, she attempts to seduce Ultear herself to the right side with uncompromising goodness, and made sure she was no longer the villainess who tried to manipulate Gerard before and incapable of hurting Gray in any way, of course.

The women in his life were really something else.

He really needed to put a stopper to the irrelevant, ridiculous scenarios that had just popped up in his head. He was spending too much time with Juvia recently, not that he had a choice; she refused to leave him alone for too long. Not that he minded too much. She was a good friend and fun to hang out with, but only when she wasn't all over him i.e. in any case, her imaginative tendencies were superbly wild, and horribly catching. And it looked like he was catching them. Only, instead of Juvia, Ultear was taking center stage on the rare occasion that his 'fantasies' decide to pay him impromptu visits.

It didn't bother him too much since it was in the privacy of his mind, but he suspected Ultear would be unhappier than Juvia if she were to somehow gain access to his thoughts.

But he was too bloody exhausted to filter his thoughts and Ultear was just too blasted vulnerable, too blasted attractive, too blasted appealing and too blasted wet and close to him right now for her own good.

He stumbled all of a suddden, and tripped on a rock, going hard on his knees and scraping his elbows against the rocky, uneven landscape in the process.

He winced hard and she cringed along with him, but he didn't drop her.

That she cringed for him when he fell made the pit of his stomach burn with embarrassment and humiliation and served to sober his thoughts for him instantly.

He felt ashamed and properly chastised for his inappropriate, unwanted thoughts earlier.

He forgot that he had no right.

He had killed her mother. How could he feel right thinking about her any further, in any way?

He couldn't allow himself to want her to be his anything; be it family or friend, and least of all, a lover.

She said she didn't blame him for Ul's death, but she had hated Ul when she said that.

She was playing a part then, lying through her teeth to him and thinking him a gullible, disposable little fool.

Things were different now.

She didn't hate her mother anymore.

She did not seem to hate him either (shecringedforhim and said, "i-its fine. I can walk on my own. You don't need to exert yourself-" itmight be because she didn't want him touching her butshecringedforhim and didntsayanythinguntilhefell so he preferred to believe the latter over the former.)

Even if she did not hate him anymore…she might still notlike him and notlike being around him.

He was nothing but an eternal reminder of all her pain and mistakes for her.

There was no reason to expect her to want to further their acquaintance or want to have anything more to do with him.

He ignored her request, refusing to put her down yet or look directly at her and carried her stiffly to the flattened rock ahead and leaned her against it with difficulty.

For the brief seconds he tried to place her carefully against the rock, his lips brushed accidentally against her ear and cheek and he sucked in a breath as she shivered involuntarily, most likely from the cold.

He moved away from her as quickly and casually as he could, walking woodenly because of the pain in his ribs.

He braced himself mentally as he turned away and shifted his gaze from her to the turbulent seas and stared fixedly at it to force himself to feel distant from the forlorn figure leaning against the rock behind him.

He had been too close to her for comfort and comfort was not something that could be found for them with each other.

He was her mother's murderer after all.

Looking at her made his chest hurt. It throbbed painfully and made him want to close the distance between them and envelop her, but he could only imagine it would be ten times worse for her and made her want to put as much distance between them as she could so she wouldn't have to refuse his touch if he was ever so presumptuous enough to offer it, or god forbid, impose it on her. Hadn't she had enough imposed on her against her will before her misconceptions corrupted her to darkness? He'd be damned if he was another addition to that bad list.

She would be the only exception in his life where he would force himself to hold back, and notdo whatever the damn hell he pleased despite her.

His role in her life was done now. He'd dispelled her darkness for her. There wasn't much else he could do.

"My fight is over…" she breathed tiredly, breaking the heavy silence between them and bringing him back to the present.

He was reminded again that he had no reason to linger or stay there any longer.

Fairy Tail needed him. And she didn't. It was as simple as it was complicated.

He looked around quietly, and picked up his wet slip of a shirt and tied it around his waist.

"….mine isn't…" he responded to her.

"…you can't win against Hades…" she offered quietly and hesitantly.

"….I figured…"

He'd known that. She had obviously been playing him earlier, when she had said he was their only hope against Hades.

"…it'd be impossible by myself…"

"….."

He took an odd sort of comfort in the uncovered, uninhibited truth of her present unlike the sugarcoated inhibitions of her past.

He was strangely relieved to find something looking like concern and acceptance flash in her now, warm and tired eyes for him; like she finallyunderstood and figuredout what he was about, and didn't dislike him too much for it.

(he allowedhimself tocling to the tinyhope that shedidnt.)

…he told himself he would never look back and impose on her…

This was to be the end of their conversation.

There was nothing to talk about. there was nothing but an endless stretch of pain between them.

She didn't try to stop him from leaving and he hadn't expected her to…

He did not look back, but he had the image of her imprinted in his head…

[….every desolate...pulsing…throbbing bit of her… along the very last one of her leaning alone against the big hard rock….small and fragile by the tall stone slab, all the fight expelled out of her…her dark, soulful eyes sad and regretful, but alive again… with a stunned and sated curiosity of him….]

…when he pushed forward.


End file.
